Thursday, 19 June 2014

Amazing Writing Advice #31: Leave it? Whey?

A lot of so culled experienced writers will tell you that you should leave a recently drifted peace of work for a while and reread it. Some even recommend redrafting it! Madness. If you do that some other writer might sneak into your bedroom at night with a BFG-style brain-trumpet and suck the ideas right out of you.

Your only responsibility as a writer is to get the ideas down as fast as possible and send them off as soon as possible. There's a slush pile out there and by Odin's ear I'll be dimmed if I'm going to let it shrink.

Remember, getting your idea out quicker means it will be seen quicker; it increases the number of things you have in the pile so you're more likely to get a manuscript pulled out; and finally I've never met an agent who has complained about a shoddy submission.

MY SUBMISSIONS IN SAUSAGE FORM

Then again I've never met an agent.

This game is all based on luck and chance and stuff like that. There's no skill to it at all. Bang 'em out like you are the book sausage factory and words are your meat, punctuation the E numbers and plot is the horrific rubbery skin.